Interstellar and ADHD Scribbling

I rewatched Interstellar via IMAX at The Chinese Theater, and the ending struck me in a way it hadn’t before. When Cooper finds himself inside the tesseract, he’s surrounded by the infinite threads of his timeline, every moment of his life stretched out and accessible. Watching that scene, I couldn’t help but think about how storytelling often mirrors this idea of layered time. 

I’ve spent countless hours in front of whiteboards, plotting entire seasons of TV. To most folks, those boards look like chaos, with disconnected beats and arcs. But to my ADHD-addled brain, it’s like stepping into a tesseract. I don’t see pieces; I see the whole. Almost instantly, I’d feel how a decision in Episode 3 might reverberate in Episode 15 or how a subplot could create a thematic ripple across the season. It’s not something I calculated; it was something I felt.

While exploring the UFO/UAP phenomenon for a project, I went down the YouTube rabbit hole of quantum mechanics and parallel dimensions. It made me wonder if my ADHD way of perceiving time, connections, and stories is a small-scale version of how beings in higher dimensions experience reality. And no, it wasn’t 4:20 PM.

Inter-Dimensional Scribbling

Physicist Michio Kaku describes how higher-dimensional beings might perceive time not as a linear progression but as a landscape where all moments - past, present, future - exist simultaneously. That’s how my mind approaches a whiteboard filled with episodes.

My story-breaking process mirrors broader ideas in quantum mechanics, where cause and effect influence vast systems. It’s like the Hopf equation, which models fluid dynamics, waves of energy, and chaos flowing into balance. Writing serialized television feels similar. Where every choice sends ripples outward, shaping the entire system.

And just as quantum mechanics reminds us that the observer influences reality, as a scribbler, I act as the observer shaping the universe of my story. ADHD perception might not fit traditional frameworks, but it allows me to intuitively grasp patterns and possibilities that others miss.

Unconventional Perception

My ability to perceive narrative connections has triggered  “How the #### did you do that?” reactions by some of my peers. In moments like those, I can feel like a wizard with magical powers. But more often than not, my ADHD makes me feel isolated. It’s like I live in a world where others don’t share or understand my perspective. My innate ability to grok narrative entanglement isn’t comorbid with the oral or prose-friendly ability to present a cogent and concise explanation of my offered insight. As exemplified by that sentence.

That got me thinking about how society treats people with unique abilities. Some individuals - like theoretical physicists, hedge fund managers, pro-tour players of Poker and Magic: The Gathering, and historical visionaries, including even polarizing modern figures like Donald Trump - have leveraged their unconventional perspectives and skill sets to gain power, prominence, or influence. Admire or revile them. What they’re capable of often defies categorization.

Let’s consider the most zeitgeisty - Donald Trump has a remarkable ability to command attention, read social dynamics, and influence people in ways that baffle many in my Westside of Los Angeles cohort. His methods might not align with traditional metrics of intelligence or strategy, but they’re undeniably effective in specific contexts. For that guy, reality is fungible.

It’s easy and comforting to dismiss and label what we don’t like or find challenging based on our emotional and bubble-based comprehension of how the world works. But does this rejection and resistance limit our appreciation of human potential?

The Need for New Metrics

I often find myself falling back on tropes of measuring success or ability, with metrics of IQ, wealth, celebrity, and political power being the low-hanging fruit. Even when I know these limited benchmarks leave little room to capture the full spectrum of human perception and intelligence. 

What about elevated powers of intuition, pattern recognition, emotional intelligence, or the ability to navigate social systems? What about traits we don’t even have the tools to quantify yet? How many extraordinary abilities have gone unnoticed because they didn’t align with our limited frameworks? How many potential visionaries were relegated to obscurity because they lacked opportunity, support, or recognition?

It’s easy to judge people who think differently, challenge the status quo, or operate outside traditional structures, but that judgment often reflects our biases. By dismissing what we don’t understand, we miss the chance to learn from perspectives that might be transformative.

Every person’s mind is its own universe, based on the observer’s relative perception. Just as a serialized season of TV is a whiteboard of interconnected threads, every individual’s neural pathways create a unique tapestry of strengths, insights, and ways of seeing the world and influencing its development.

I feel like I live in a world of ever-increasing bubbles of space and time that value cultural conformity over originality, simplicity over complexity, and immediacy over wisdom. Like Cooper navigating the timeline threads of Interstellar, I need to spend more time in my ADHD-tesseract, challenging my qubit of reality and grokking the superposition of more entangled perspectives.

Remember, you’re not facing the blank page alone. You have your scribbler’s toolbox. So, ABW. Always. Be. Writing.